WhatsApp to Roll Out Payments in India Later This Year

Instant Messaging platform Whatsapp Global head Will Cathcart today revealed that the company could roll out its payments service to users across India by the end of this year.

The messaging app, which has around 400 Million users in India, has been testing its payments in the country last year with more than a million users.

Cathcart said the company’s vision is to make sending money as easy as sending a message on the platform.”We believe that if we get this right, it will accelerate financial inclusion and bring value for people in India’s fast-growing digital economy, We can’t wait to provide the service more of our users all across India later this year,” he said at an event here.

Whatsapp service which would compete against the likes of the PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm, is yet to be rolled out nationally in India.

The Facebook-owned company which has more than 2 billion users across the globe, is also looking to roll out its payment service in some other markets as well.

Whatsapp ambitious payment service blueprint in India has been caught in a bind more than concerns around authentication and its data storage practices.

In the month of October last year, Whatsapp had revealed that it had developed a system to store payments-related data in India as a part of compliance with the RBI policy on storing such data locally.